The proliferation of vehicular wireless communication services continues to challenge both original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and their suppliers to innovate cost effective antenna solutions. Specifically, these emerging services operate on a wide range of frequencies and thus necessitate the development of multiband antenna systems to mitigate cost and improve esthetics. Optimal solutions provide multiband operation by clever consolidation of multiple antennas into a single unit.
An automotive telematics antenna, which combines AMPS (American Mobile Phone Standard), PCS (Personal Communication Service) and GPS (Global Positioning System) services into a single unit, is an example of a consolidated multiband antenna. Moreover, the recent addition of Satellite Digital Audio Radio System, SDARS, has prompted the development of a quad-band antenna adding SDARS to telematics functions.
While these multiband antennas offer many advantages to OEM's, they nevertheless require dedicated coaxial cables for each function. The additional coaxial cables impact routing, location options, increase hole diameter for roof-mounted applications while increasing cost and complexity.
Therefore, there is a need to combine functions onto fewer coaxial cables to reduce the number of cables used. For example, the elimination of even one coaxial cable is significant as it means an OEM can save typically three (3) meters of coaxial cable per vehicle. The present invention fulfills this need among others.